


"Friend of Dorothy"

by FBIEpidemic



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: 1980s, HIV/AIDS, Homophobia, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Sorry, M/M, Sexy Times, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 05:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15789756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FBIEpidemic/pseuds/FBIEpidemic
Summary: AIDS was an epidemic that beseeched the United States. Effecting California and New York majorly and first.





	"Friend of Dorothy"

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a dumb thing I thought of after watching the Normal Heart

February 1982-

He left work Friday later than usual. Not because he spent far too much time behind his desk thinking about what it is that he should do next.

Donna had been watching the television and told him about these spas for men. Although she’d never directly accused him, she did mention they were primarily for gay men. Her lesbian friend were raving mad, something that Harvey never could understand.

Why are the gay men hated so much by the lesbians?

Either way, Donna had given him the news over the newspaper. As if them openly discussing that sort of thing wouldn't matter. No one heard.

Harvey wasn’t dragged out of Pearson Hardman by his hair. No slurs or punches were thrown at him. Nothing happened.

“You’re going, aren’t you?” 

Donna’s apartment isn’t as large as his but he’d still rather go to her’s than his own. 

Seated on her couch, legs tucked under them and hovering over a bowl of ice cream she asks him again about the spa. He can’t hide his face.

“I-” he wants to tell her no. That he’s not gay but he’s… 

“Listen,” she moves on the couch, causing it to dip oddly. “I know. Okay? It’s… just a Donna thing. It’s not because it’s notable or anything else, I swear. So go have fun.” She hits his shoulder playfully,” you’ll need something to do Saturday anyways.”

When he looks at her, shocked because Saturday is their day to just chill and hang out she smiles into her spoon and he knows. 

He wishes he could be as strong and brave as Donna. To come into a job interview and just straight out say that she’s a lesbian. It’s why he hired her. It’s why he’s going to go to that spa. 

And he does.

 

The room was sweaty, filled with heat and cum. 

“Fuck me.” Passions, white and dirty staining the walls and towels forgotten on the ground. 

Harvey tries to look away, not because the men going at each other are worried he might see but because he’s ashamed to be here. To be a fag in America. 

The thrust and shouts only get louder and sooner rather than later they’re just background noise. He can’t think of the room without them. 

Hands creep up his towel, each man fawning at him with desire. He wishes he minded their touch or their gazes but he doesn’t. He yearns for more. He never lets them close enough to get what he wants.

The showers are worse, he shouldn’t expect anything less. He joined a gay gym, he knew very well what he was doing. Donna told him what he was doing.

There’s hand that comes out of nowhere. Not guided or following him but just there. He’s being pushed against the blue tiles of the shower. The water he just turned on, too hot and burning, rained over them both. 

The man, younger, pushes him against the tiles, leaving the water to burn his back as the spray misses the rest of his body. His chest rest against the tile, his nipples reacting both to the hand working over his ass and the cold bite of the tile. 

Teeth attack his neck and his erection is flagging and bobbing as his body jerks with attraction.

The other man bites his shoulder, licking at the wound he created and pulls away. “I’m going to fuck you,” it’s not a warning, just a downright promise.

Fingers, hard and oiled, work at his ass. Opening him up for the other man and Harvey’s almost glad he hasn’t actually seen the man yet. A rough hand grabs his jaw and those fingers and thrusting hard and so good against his prostate that now he’s panting and moaning like every other guy.

Harvey feels the third finger, the burn, and stretching that accompanies it. He finds it someone in the thrust to wonder how many fingers this man is going to use to prep. Wonders if he’ll use a condom, unlikely given the usual debauchery that follows a question like that. Gay men don’t need condoms.

The thick head of the other man’s penis pushing against him and it burns but a moan still falls from his agape mouth. The man’s fingers, still oiled, drag up his body to his open mouth. They hook his cheek and pull as he thrust. 

They fall into limbo, both seeking their own pleasure. They find it.

September 1982-

He’s laying on another man’s bed. Face down in the covers and only partially aware of the towels wiping him down. Cleaning bodily fluids from his back and ass and hair. 

He needs to thank Donna. She got him out of his funk, made him gay once again. 

“Think you can go again?” It’s not really a question, another man is lifting his hips and breathing down his neck, hungrily. Hands, too many to belong to only one person, are touching him. One pumps at his limp penis, attempting to bring it to life once again. Another holds his jaw open, working the tip of a penis against his lips. 

He’s lost between bodies, worried with pleasure and nothing else. He’s not Harvey Reginald Specter to these men. He’s sex and that’s all he wants to be. 

“Ah,” a hard hand slaps his already sore ass,” so tight!” 

He’ll call in late Monday, tell Hardman he’s got company. When really he’ll be naked in bed, pushed between as many flushed bodies as he can get. 

“Move,” his hips are lifted once again and he’s suddenly empty as all the men rotate. “Don’t touch him.” Fingers are in his ass, pushing and moving,” I wanna see how many he can take.”

Blood rushes to his groin, he moans despite everything telling him he should be terrified. 

Whoever has taken control of the situation is running a hand up his chest, taking advantage of him being on his hands and knees. “My name’s Michael,” he breathes, biting at Harvey’s hip. “Remember that when I make you cum.”

Harvey moans at it all. Michael’s hot breath, the fourth finger being prematurely added to the others, the men standing over him jerking off at the sight of him.

It hurts, burns, but he still finds himself pushing back. Fucking himself on those fingers. 

“He’s gonna cum,” one of them observes and Harvey grunts in agreement. 

Michael, it has to be, grabs his cock and stops him. “Fill him,” no one’s sure when it is that Michael became in charge of the whole situation but the other man falls to their knees. Finding some body part to grind against.

Somehow, Michael fits his thumb in but Harvey can’t even groan in protest because he’s gagging on a dick and he’s not sure where it came from. Michael keeps up his thrusts and whispers,” cum. Cum for me.”

That’s all it takes and Harvey’s jerking underneath all the bodies. The cock still blocking his airway and it’s so good.

So good, he can’t remember anything after it. 

At some point, Michael is back. He gently wraps a blanket around Harvey’s shivering form. “Drink,” Michael lifts Harvey off the bed, just his back enough so that he doesn’t choke on the water being held at his lips. 

He soothes Harvey’s hair back as he waits,” I apologize if I was too rough.” He pulls something off of the nightstand and offers it under Harvey’s nose,”breath.” Sex with Michael must be the same as everything with the younger man. Whom, Harvey is just noticing can’t be any older than twenty-five. 

He inhales whatever it is and finds himself coughing and gagging as it assaults his body.

Michael only hums as he pats at Harvey’s back,” I suppose I shouldn’t have just assumed you were a coke kinda guy.” 

Harvey wants to shout out something but his nose simply burns and he’s seconds away from sneezing.

“My bad,” Michael seems like he’s truly being apologetic. And Harvey can’t be that mad because he is being sweet, all things considered. “Foolish. I don’t typically do a lot of aftercare so I assure you my grandmother raised me much better than this.”

He doesn’t leave, stays right there, pressing against Harvey with an equally naked body. There are no sloppy kisses, no fingers they just lay there in a tangle of legs and sheets. It’s actually nice. 

“Well did you exchange numbers,” he’d been shy to share something so raw with Donna but eventually he told her. He told her all of it. After some kinky jokes, a few astonished gasps, she came around. 

He covers his face with his hand. Life is so cruel to him lately. “No. It was a one-time thing.” That he’s not very sure of but it hardly matters when you just told your best friend about the mind-blowing sex you just had. 

Donna looks displeased,” you let a fit, young, hot, gay man get past you? What the hell is wrong with you?” He just shrugs and tries to lean over and scoop out some of her ice cream but she moves. “Nope. I’m mad at you. You should have gotten his number so no ice cream for you.” 

January 7, 1983-

The first spot was on his foot. He hid it with ease. 

“Harvey!” Beers raised to salute as he made his way through the crowd. They know him here. He’s just another great bottom for most of them. For a few, a hard, quick fuck in the ally.

His heart thumped in time with the beat and the pounding of feet on the dance floor. All around him, a sea of erections and movement as men rubbed and danced with one another with little inhibition.

Boys alongside men, in the dark their hands all fumbled with zippers and buttons because what they all seek is primal. And for once, to some of societies disgust, their sex is just sex. No matter the crime.

This isn’t his scene. If he’s caught here, like this, with them he’ll be killed. Everything he knows jerked out from underneath him.

“Hello, baby.” A sultry voice of recognition is all he gets before another man is grinding against his hip and he yearns to push this man, this _boy_ , against the wall and ravish him mad but he needs to do something. To see someone.

He pushes against the man’s chest, trying to ease the attraction he feels enough so that he can think clearly,” not right now.” He untucks a money from his back pocket, an unknown amount and shoves it in the man’s direction, telling him to go by himself a drink. 

It’s safer this way.

“Michael,” his courage is dying in his throat. He’s dizzy and lightheaded, the doctors warned of this.

He was so fucking stupid. He’d seen the reports, he gets the papers. Not that any of them were any help but he sure as hell wasn’t paying attention when he read GRIDS while drinking his morning coffee. He wasn’t paying attention when saw the medical reports about Kaposi's Sarcoma. He wasn’t paying attention when he heard Donna tell him about what the lesbians were saying about the gay men they hung out with. He wasn’t paying attention when he fucked a boy eight years his junior. 

Said boy stands before him now, running a bony hand over another man’s jaw. Delivering wet kisses up, up, up, and Harvey has to look away. It’s all too much.

“Specter.”

Michael is looking at him, not like he had the night they were together. He’s no longer bothered with the other man. He’s standing right in front of Harvey, touching Harvey’s face in his hands and looking concerned. 

Michael runs a finger down Harvey’s jaw, so gentle and soothing in comparison to the lust filled drag he’d taken down the other man’s. “Specter, you look sickly. What are you doing here?”

Harvey just stands there, he’s found Michael and he’s bone tired. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do anymore.

Michael does. He wraps his arms around Harvey’s hip in that way that men do in the clubs and begins to lead Harvey away from the thumping and the men and the erections. He holds Harvey like men hold one another when they’re conveying to the crowd that they’re going out back to fuck but that they don’t want extras. 

Harvey’s confused.

“Michael,” the younger man’s name comes out breathy and weak but Michael holds him anyways and keeps leading him out. Harvey’s almost surprised when Michael doesn’t push him against the wall. 

He would go chest first and his pants would hit the ground. His erection would press against the wall and Michael would press his body against Harvey’s ass and cold fingers-

“Here, sit.” But there is no sex. Just an old cement step and the wind biting into his skin. Michael seats down beside him, not seeming to mind that Harvey needs all the help he can get as he falls down on to the step. 

“Michael-” he’s haggard, collapsing in on himself. 

“Mike,” he’s corrected but not harshly. 

Harvey nods but doesn’t continue, he’s distracted by cold fingers pulling at his coat. He’s half expecting warm kisses to appear up his neck but instead, Mike takes his own scarf off and wraps it around Harvey’s neck.

“Mike,” Harvey tries again. “Mike, I have-”

“I know,” Mike frowns at him, not disapproving. Just sad. “They think I’m a carrier. Some bullshit like that, I think. I tried to find you, to tell you, but I couldn’t say anything at your workplace. Couldn’t do that to you.” 

They sit in the shivering silence of one another’s breathing. Unsure of what needs to be said, what isn’t, and what’s left in a world where neither are excepted and one is living a death sentence. 

Mike wraps his arms around Harvey’s ever thinning frame,” come on. Get up, now. I shouldn’t have brought you out here.” He tugs Harvey up, carefully pulling the older man’s coat around his thin body. “I’m gonna take you home.”

February 17, 1983-

Sobbing, he walks into Harvey’s apartment and that’s all he hears. He’s late, got caught up at the store by another old friend telling him about another dead gay man. The sobbing leads him to the bedroom,” oh God.”

Harvey had to give up his job, he told his boss’ that he’d need some time off. 

He was fired three weeks later. Got a phone call from a mysterious ‘Jessica’. Whoever the woman was, she upset Harvey. She broke his moral. 

He blames her now as he collects the broken man off of the floor of the bedroom. 

February 19, 1983-

“Shh,” Mike attempts comfort as well as he can. It’s just not his job. It’s shouldn't have to be. “I know. I know.”

When he truly doesn’t. He has no idea the betrayal that Harvey feels and some selfish part of him is glad. Because they both know the end is coming. Harvey can feel it in his bones, Mike can see it in his face.

February 22, 1983-

Mike stands over Harvey, hands on his hips and worried expression fell over his face. No one will help them, the nurses will hardly touch Harvey, his arm is eaten alive by a rash because no one’s changed the IV in his arm for hours. Days if that nurse never came in last night.

He walks across the room, he didn’t sign up for this. They’re not even lovers, not for a long, long time. And yet, he’s terrified. “Harv?” 

The older man had fallen silent. The whole room, in fact, because the only machines hooked up to him is an IV. It’s all the hospital could spare. Not even a damn heart monitor. 

“Harv,” Mike walks to the bed quickly, his fingers searching for a pulse. He’s read everything he could. He’s done his best to prepare for something like this and now his heart is in his throat. “Fuck. Fuck. Harvey!” He pulls at the trashy gown on Harvey’s body. It’s false hope that he can find a pulse if the other man is naked. “Fuck!” 

Mike pushes himself away from Harvey. He trips and topples over the chair and lands hard on the ground. He promised the… The lesbian…. Donna, he promised Donna that Harvey would be okay. That he’d be fine if Donna needed to go get a shower or some sleep. 

He can remember hearing the other men screaming, the shouts throughout the basement halls. Now he’s just another voice. 

They’re all just another voice. 

Dead men. 

Dead gay men. That’s why they don’t matter because they were gay. Gay men don’t get love stories. They die young and those who don’t, well they just get the cake. Don’t they? Living while everyone you love dies around is not a blessing. Hiding who you are because it’s safe is not brave. 

Love is worth dying for. No matter what kind of love it may be.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the shitty writing


End file.
